From the general prior art it is known to activate and monitor drive mechanisms of adjustable lift bodies or flaps such as, e.g., landing flaps or slats of high lift systems of modern civil as well as military transport planes through central digital computers. These are located, together with other computers such as the flight control computers or maintenance computers, in the board calculator cabinets in a so-called avionics bay positioned in the vicinity of the aircraft's cockpit. In consequence, particularly the safety-sensitive aircraft computers are accommodated inside one room while being air-conditioned and supplied with electric power in a uniform manner. The accommodation of the named computers in one and the same avionics bay or in a single accommodation space presents the advantage of uniform atmospheric conditions—which create the technical preconditions for observing the failure rate of these computers, for instance—having to be established for the single accommodation space only.
Accordingly, all of the components of the high lift system external of the avionics bay are connected via analog signal connections to the activation computer thereof. Thus, e.g., the drive motors of the high lift systems provided for adjusting the landing flaps or leading edge flaps (slats), the operating lever (slat/flap levers), as well as the sensors for component and system monitoring are functionally connected via analog signal connections to the activation computer for activation the landing flaps and locking brakes. In this way it is ensured that the functional demands to the high lift system and particularly to the activation computer thereof are met, for the activation and monitoring signals are transmitted immediately and thus at a minimal time delay between the input device of the high lift system such as the operating lever, for example, and the activation computer of the high lift system as well as between the activation computer and the drive motors or the drive device of the high lift system. The described use of analog signal transmission lines particularly results in advantages with regard to the realization of a safety concept, for hereby the delay time or dead time between the occurrence of a fault and its recognition and corresponding functional reactions in the activation device, such as triggering the locking and safety brakes is minimized, and in the event of a fault the reconfiguration of the high lift system may therefore be carried out within a comparatively short time period.